


Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

by IShouldBeWriting



Category: Singularity North
Genre: Big Girl Panties, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Community: 31_days, Empathy Sucks, Fuck That Hurts!, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 13:56:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/837651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShouldBeWriting/pseuds/IShouldBeWriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’d been handed the tools to use on the job.  That didn’t mean learning to use them was easy. That didn’t mean she had to like it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

_Breathe,_ she thought. _Deep inhale. Hold. Deep Exhale. This doesn’t have to get the better of you. Find the boundaries of what is you and what is other and stay inside of them. You know how to do this, so just breathe._

Tash focused, ignoring the sharply percussive noises of gunfire around her as she tried to narrow down her consciousness to a knife’s edge. _None of that matters. You don’t have to be the one to defend yourself right now. You have a job to do and that’s not it. Now save this man’s life. Keep him alive or it all changes. He can’t die. Period. So shut it all out. Let Harry and Jamil do their jobs. You do yours._

Her teeth tore open the packaging of the compression bandage, fingers peeling it off the inside of the foil wrapper and sweeping it down to slap on top of the heavily bleeding chest wound. The man groaned, thoughts going fractured and incoherent with the pain she’d caused simply by slapping the bandage on. Tash tried not to flinch, not to wince.

_It’s not your pain to take. Stop letting it get inside you. Not yours._ She chanted to herself like a mantra.

There was a high pitched whine, a flutter of displaced air too close to her bent shoulders followed by a shower of bark fragments as the bullet impacted the tree behind her.

“Too close damnit,” she growled aloud.

“Sorry,” Jamil muttered.

“Its simple, Sgt. You keep them off my back or he dies.”

Jamil’s pistol clattering off three shots in rapid succession. As no further shots came at them from that direction, Tash assumed he’d hit his mark and turned the entirety of her attention back to her patient. The man was panting, mentally floundering and flailing about like a drowning victim as he struggled to find a way to contain the pain.

_That doesn’t belong to you,_ Tash reminded herself as she dug out one of the preloaded syringes of morphine and yanked the cap off. _If you don’t fix the source of the hurt, he won’t survive to feel anything. So let him hurt and do your damned job.You can’t help him if you get sucked into the fugue._

It was hard, so very damned hard, to do what the psychologist had told her. A lifetime worth of instincts and habits screamed at her to untangle the threads of pain’s ever tightening noose from around her patient’s mental neck. She didn’t need research papers to prove to her that the psychological effect of pain could kill him just as easily as the physical.

But she’d tried that before. Tried to treat her patients’ minds and bodies at the same time. The last time, it had almost killed one of her teammates, almost dragged her down into madness with him.

She’d been referred to the squadron’s psych for it, Major Bennett and Major Black both hoping that doing so would give her the tools she needed to hold the fine line they knew she tread every damned day because of her gift. It’d been a risk on their part. A calculated one, but a risk nonetheless. Visiting the squadron’s shrink could just as easily have landed Tash with a one way ticket to the psych ward at Frimley Park and a medical discharge. They’d _told_ her what they intended to do before they’d even filed the official mission reports. And heaven help her, she’d agreed.

But it was hard. So damned hard not to dive into his mind, take the pain away, absorb it into herself, give him room to breathe easily.

_Breathe,_ she reminded herself once again. _Breathe!_


End file.
